New York

New York's Devonian — the Hamilton Group trilobites (Eldredgeops, Greenops), the Helderberg and Onondaga corals and brachiopods, the Rochester Shale crinoids — is collected on private land with permission, on road cuts where stopping is legal and the highway authority does not object, and at organised sites. The Penn Dixie Fossil Park in Hamburg is the standard: a day fee, hand tools, keep what you find. Private quarries open only to clubs.

New York State Parks (9 NYCRR 375) and DEC state forests, wildlife management areas and the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve prohibit disturbing or removing rocks, minerals and fossils. The New York State Museum has the state's paleontology programme and identifies finds.

New York's ivory law (Environmental Conservation Law 11-0535a) is one of the strictest in the country: sale of elephant and mammoth ivory and rhinoceros horn is prohibited with narrow antique and de minimis exceptions, and it applies at shows and online to anyone selling into the state. A fossil dealer with mammoth tusk or a mineral dealer with an ivory-handled tool needs to know it.

Sale of New York fossils collected on private land or at a pay site is the owner's or the site's decision; Penn Dixie's finds are the visitor's to keep.

Sources

Cite this article

Stratum Study. "New York" (Law & ethics). Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-16. https://stratum.black/study/law/us-new-york. Accessed 2026-09-20.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-us-new-york,
  title        = {New York},
  author       = {{Stratum Study}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/study/law/us-new-york}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Law & ethics article, Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-16; sources: stratum. Accessed 2026-09-20.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.

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